


summer wind

by orphan_account



Series: to the power of three [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, Q is a Holmes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2014-08-31
Packaged: 2018-02-15 12:02:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2228307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>q was not always q.</p>
<p>not that anyone needs to know that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	summer wind

**Author's Note:**

> warning: the following fic contains no james, hardly any mycroft, and a great deal of q. oh, and backstory. lots of that.
> 
> (yes, i know the style’s kind of choppy, especially towards the end, and definitely not my usual, but it seemed fitting.)
> 
> unbeta-ed, unbrit-picked, you know. corrections are especially helpful in this one because ROMAN NUMERALS WHAT.

q was not always q.

there were times before he was known as mi6’s youngest quartermaster- oh, the times. when he was sixteen and knew more about computers than some triple his age, when he was nearly twenty and teaching an old welsh woman english in return for food and board, when he was twenty-two and one of the then-quartermaster’s best and brightest.

not that anyone needs to know that.

_i_.

quentin alexander holmes is born on a windy august morning.

his eyes, when they open, are the same pale green as those of the young boy leaning against the hospital bed, and already there is a wisp of dark hair on his head. these two are brothers; no one could mistake them for anything else. “he’s just like you, sherlock,” someone breathes- the mother, perhaps, or the father.

“god help us,” another boy retorts, taller and older and leaning lazily on the wall. he does not have the family resemblance, replacing black hair for fair brown and calculating green eyes for smug gray.

“oh, sh,” someone else reprimands, and mycroft holmes shrugs, expressionless.

_ii_.

quentin- not q, not for many years- finds his feet quickly, but not his voice.

everyone soon knows the young toddler who runs about the grounds with his brother sherlock- the elderly butler, who’s worked for the holmes family since quentin’s father was young; the maids, who giggle every time they see mycroft; even the cook, who contrary to stereotypes is a lean hard young woman who crushes rats with her bare hands (or so they say).

everyone knows and loves him, although they’ve never heard him make a single sound.

“say _mummy_ ,” mrs. holmes encourages him when he’s three. “mu-mmy.”

“mum, leave off, he won’t speak until he’s ready,” sherlock orders with the confidence of a young boy, ushering his brother away again.

_iii_.

he finally speaks on his fourth birthday, and from then on, it’s full sentences. everyone wonders at it, but quentin ignores them in favor of memorizing the periodic table.

“it’s the bottom ones that mess him up,” sherlock explains, and no one contradicts.

_iv_.

sherlock eventually gives up on people in general.

“you,” he says to quentin the year he leaves for university, “are _smart_. don’t waste it.”

then he’s gone, not following in mycroft’s footsteps but tracing his own. mr. and mrs. holmes exchange worried looks quite often until quentin thinks their foreheads are going to be stuck that way- permanently wrinkled.

_v_.

quentin doesn’t waste it. he learns how to code when he’s fifteen, hacking his private school’s website for practice and giving everyone terrible marks. it’s embarrassingly easy.

(“we honestly have no idea what’s going on,” the frazzled principal says on the news. quentin shrugs for his parents.)

_vi_.

he drops out of uni in his second year.

“boring?” suggests sherlock over the phone from his flat in london, where he’s most likely smoking too much and/or picking apart dead bodies- quentin honestly doesn’t want to know. “or you could tell them it ‘just wasn’t for you.’ god knows what that means, but parents seem to eat it up.”

“perhaps i just _won’t_ tell them,” quentin replies absently, and hangs up with a click.

_vii_.

originally, he was just going to stop in some remote town in perhaps germany, but the leaving feels too good, finally cutting his ties to the country he loves and hates at the same time.

he drops off the grid and stays there, overprotective brothers be damned.

_viii_.

in those thirteen months, sherlock and mycroft speak to each other more than they have in years. but quentin doesn’t need to know that.

_ix_.

he finally returns after he’s finished roaming europe and promptly buys a flat and several computers, willfully ignoring his parents’ frantic calls.

“a _job_?” asks sherlock, as the only person quentin’s spoken to in the time he’s been back in england. “as what, an evil hacker vigilante?” there’s a hint of suppressed amusement in his voice, next to the incredulity, which quentin takes no notice of.

_x_.

he hacks his mi6 record clean in forty-two seconds and allows himself to be a little proud.

(just a little.)

_xi_.

under the quartermaster, quentin is assigned quite a bit of field work, despite his many shortcomings in the physical department, and before long he’s disarmed more bombs than he can count.

(several double-ohs start requesting him at that point, saying, “he’s far less whiny than the others.” quentin doesn’t much like the agents, but he has to agree.)

_xii_.

and then there’s the mysterious job in middle of nowhere, russia.

quentin- still not q, not yet- has never understood the fear of flying.

he agrees.

_xiii_.

there’s turbulence

_xiv_.

(or something)

_xv_.

and suddenly they’re falling

_xvi_.

a weightless feeling in the bottom of his stomach, like the time thomas from primary school convinced him to go on a roller coaster at an amusement park

_xvii_.

quentin notices, feeling oddly detached, wind rushing past the window

_xviii_.

and nearly smiles at the irony.

_xx_.

_symmetry_ , he thinks, _how fitting._

_i_.

quentin holmes is born on a windy august morning, and he dies on a windy august night, a half smile on his lips.

**Author's Note:**

> mUAHAHAHAHA.


End file.
